Introduction to social media

Magda Hercheui

The emergence of social media (collaborative media and Web 2.0)

• Social networks: Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Ning (http://www.ning.com/); LinkedIn

• Blogs: Blogger, Typepad, WorldPress, and platforms to search blogs by tag and keyword (http://technorati.com/)

• Forums• Twitter• Wikis (Wikipedia); Google Docs• Social bookmarking: Delicious (http://delicious.com/)• Sharing content: Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare• Google (search engine based on links)• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) (web feed; news feed) (

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm)• Mashups

News forms of interacting and sharing information and knowledge

• From private to collective communication channels: easy access to known and unknown people

• Easy publishing tools (in relation to traditional media and the Web 1.0) (architecture of participation)

• Variety of tools that may be combined in different ways• Easy collaborative tools for building knowledge• Easy channels to share information and knowledge (structured and

unstructured)• Easy access to content, from searching (Google) to mashups (web

application which combines contents from different databases and/or platforms) and syndication (RSS).

• Support the ‘process of knowing’ vis-à-vis the perspective of ‘having knowledge’; knowledge comes from the connections and the capacity of building connections to have access to relevant knowledge when necessary

• Interacting with customers (feedback, innovation)• Improving marketing, building branding

Social Media & Network effects

• Positive network effects: some resources are more valuable the more people are using them, such as telephone and email systems, and standardised communication protocols (such as the Internet Protocol).

Innovation challenge• Most big organisations are good innovators in

silos but they are not efficient in creatively combining synergies across divisions. For instance, Time Warner owned Time Music and AOL, but it has not created iTunes.

– The problem is that organisations have structures for fostering efficiency and strategy execution, which undermine collaboration across divisions.

– A solution could be the fostering of social networking interaction, which would not necessarily change the formal structure of organisations.

(Kleinbaum and Tushman, 2008)

Enterprise 2.0• Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social

software platforms (ESSPs) by organisations in pursuit of their goals, from Intranets to public web sites. (McAffee, 2009: p. 73)

• ESSP:– Social software: enable people to connect and

collaborate, forming online communities;– Platforms: contributions and interactions are globally

visible and persistent over time;– Emergent: permit the visualisation of structure that is

inherent to people’s interaction over time (through observing links and tags).

Organisational mechanisms of emergence

• Enterprise 2.0 is not a technological phenomenon, but technology enables new forms of interaction.

• Organisations should adopt organisational and managerial mechanisms to foster new forms of interaction and innovation in the use of Web 2.0 tools.

– For instance, Wikipedia draws upon norms (such as consensual decision making among senior community members and warming of argumentative contributors), and policies and guidelines (accuracy, neutral perspective, free content, anyone may edit, and respect for other contributors).

McAfee, 2009: 126

Enterprise 2.0 resources• Group editing: group (such as communities of practice)

may contribute to the same document easily. This is a way of distributing innovation-support resources.

• Authoring and distributing content to broad audiences, with benefits in terms of knowledge sharing, individual engagement, easier correction of content and less administrative burden.

• Broadcast search: queries in public forums such as Yahoo! Answers and Innocentive.

• Network formation and maintenance.• Collective intelligence (wisdom of crowds?): obtaining

answers from dispersed groups; identified ‘recommended’ content (Digg’s voting system and Amazon’s recommendations based on user’s navigation and behave).

• Self-organisation: Google search, Delicious tag cloud, network of strong and weak ties in social networks.

Enterprise 2.0 obstacles• Fears of inappropriate behaviour, inaccurate or embarrassing

information, and noncompliance with laws, regulations and policies.

• The difficulty of motivating employees (or customers and suppliers) to contribute, vis-à-vis entrenched practices, rooted mind-sets and technophobia.

• Managers may also put obstacles to avoid losing power and control of information. Companies keep their orthodoxy in management and structure styles, ignoring that new technologies and organisational structures may support efforts to solve complex problems.

• Lack of understanding of the nature of technology, and the need to fit technology with organisational needs. It is not about technology in itself and the implementation of technology per se is not going to deliver Enterprise 2.0.

Social media challenges• Security• Privacy• Data ownership• Damage to reputation• Intellectual property rights• Waste of time and resources• Lack of awareness of risks• Discontinuity of social media platforms• Change in privacy policy settings• Difficult to understand the nature of each tool, and how to

combine them in meaningful content portfolios • Lack of strategy

Web 2.0 finds its paydayMckinsey (December 2010)

• Interviews with 3,249 executives around the world.• Companies are increasingly adopting collaborative Web

2.0, connecting employees, customers, partners and suppliers.

• 2/3 of respondents report using Web 2.0 in their organisations (in some degree), including social network (40%) and blogs (38%).

• Executives understand companies are benefiting from Web 2.0 solutions, from having more effective marketing to accessing knowledge faster.

• The more networked the company (internally and externally), the more the benefits they perceive of Web 2.0. technologies.

Benefits from using Web 2.0Mckinsey (December 2010)

Enterprise 2.0 success• Have strategies: first define goals, then choose appropriate

tools. Alignment and collaboration between businesses and IT departments.

• Design tools that will be used and can be integrated to others platforms, and give incentives to contributors.

• Turn off the old processes and tools that do not fulfill the company’s needs: move Web 2.0 into the flow.

• Prepare to slow diffusion when technology is not well known and demands behavioural change.

• Communicate, educate and evangelise about the tools.• Use believers (early and spontaneous adopters) to diffuse

the tools and advantages.• Measure progress, not only financial returns (tangible and

intangible benefits) (without losing track of the business case).

Increasing competitiveness• Enterprise 2.0 solutions enable and foster new

business ideas to emerge and spread organically rather than being developed only by a central structure and imposed top-down.

• They may built collaboration environments that permit the easy emergence and spread of knowledge, through strengthening the social ties.

• The innovation that emerges from Enterprise 2.0 solutions may be embedded throughout the organisation, and new products and services, fostering competitiveness through differentiation.

Improving communication• Blogs: Blogger, WordPress

• Microblogging: Foursquare, Twitter

• Location-based social networks: Foursquare, Facebook places

• Social networking: Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, Hyves, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Yammer

• Events: Meetup.com

• Information Aggregators: Netvibes

• Online advocacy and Fundraising: Causes

Improving collaboration• Wikis: Wikimedia, Wikispaces

• Social bookmarking/tagging: Delicious, Google Reader

• Social news: Digg, Newsvine

• Social navigation: Trapster (alerts you to police speed traps and other roadway hazards), Waze (community-based traffic)

• Content Management Systems: Wordpress

• Document Managing and Editing Tools: Google Docs, Dropbox.com

• Collaboration: Central Desktop

Social networks• Facebook: be cool, use analytics, know easily your audience,

costs and reach (marketing, CRM, branding, connection to further content)

• Linkedin: find peers, show professional face of people, participate in communities of interests, build sustainable connections.

• Ning: build your own social network, and control your analytics and revenue models (it is paid) (http://www.ning.com/).

• Twitter (mini blog? RSS?): marketing, reputation, branding, diffusion of ideas, source of information, network tool, community building.

Other social media tools• Forums (http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/)• Chats (http://uk.msn.com/)• Flickr, Picasa• YouTube• Slideshare • Podcasts• RSS• Skype• Scribd• Reviews (Amazon.com)• Q&A (WikiAnswers)

http://socialmedialandscape.com/images/SocialMediaLandscape.jpg

http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/SocialMediaLandscape2011.jpg

http://www.alchemyuk.com/media/images/social_media_landscape.jpg

http://www.fredcavazza.net/wp-content/thumbnails/blogs.dir/1/files/2010/12/SocialMediaLandscape2009-lowsrc.jpg

http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/Web2_framework_p3.jpg

http://socialmediafish.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/international-social-media-landscape21.jpg

Main references• Kleinbaum, A.M. and Tushman, M.L. (2008). Managing Corporate Social

Networks. Harvard Business Review, July-August, 26-27.• McAfee, A. (2009). Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your

Organization's Toughest Challenges. Cambridge, Mass.: HBS Press Book.• McKinsey Report: Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise. July 2008.• McKinsey Report: The rise of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its pay

day. December 2010 (authors: Jacques Bughin and Michael Chui)• O’Reilly, T. (2005). What Is Web 2.0. http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-

web-20.html?page=1 • Smith, N., Wollan, R., and Zhou, C. (2011). The Social Media Management

Handbook: Everything you need to know to get social media working. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

• The Economist. A world of connections. A special report on social networking. 30 January 2010.